5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

In most countries now, the jurisdiction of juvenile courts is automatically waived when a juvenile above a certain age, usually 13 to 16, commits a violent or other serious crime, and the case is automatically transferred to adult court. A certification hearing takes place and an adult court prosecutor is required to convince the adult court that the case should be transferred. The juvenile is entitled to an advocate/ attorney at the hearing and to present any evidence which mitigates against the transfer. For example, in Indiana, South Dakota and Vermont, children as young as 10 can be tried as adults. California’s Proposition which was passed in 2000 allows prosecutors to automatically try juveniles who commit felonies as adults. Under Michigan’s Juvenile Waiver Law passed in 1997, juveniles can automatically be tried as adults. Similarly, in the U.K., persons under 18 are tried by a “Youth Court” which is a special type of magistrate’s court for those aged 10-18 years. The Crown Court can sentence the child for offences of murder committed when the offender was a youth as well as for “grave crimes” including sexual assault and sentence the child to “indeterminate detention for public protection.” This trends of trial of juveniles in the ordinary court of law defeats end of justice. Time has come to rethink this trends in the background of Convention of Rights of the Child.